them. Rather the realization of a character should be above all the realization of his habit of speech. Even a mannerism, like Uriah Heep's harping on the word humble, is directly useful. Above expression by mannerisms, which may be no more than caricature, range many degrees of fineness. The memorable Miss Bates. in Jane Austen's Emma is distinguished almost entirely by the peculiar flavour of her prolixity; but the prolixity of Gratiano in the Merchant of Venice is suggested distinctly in a few lines. As in all other matters of characterization, Shakespeare is supreme in lifelike variety of speech.

162. The other task of dialogue, to forward the plot, is involved in the larger problem of transitions (§ 192), i.e. is largely a matter of mechanism. Futility in narration is marked by eternal says I and said he. The ways out of this are: first, to omit most of these explanatory transitions as unnecessary; second, simply to vary the terms, — said, replied, rejoined, answered, ejaculated, etc.; third, and surest of all, as often as possible to use terms suggestive of attitude, manner, or even character-insisted the other, the boy blurted, whispered the girl, the child cried, clamoured the three, and so lisped, panted, stammered, coldly affirmed, warmly denied, went, screamed, hissed, bellowed, and fifty other specific verbs (§ 226). In fact, what may be called the mechanism of variety in narration is part of the mechanism of description.

II. PLOT

a. Unity

163. Thus it is evident that unity in a story is secured mainly by the handling of the characters; that is, by

son.

reducing so far as is feasible the number of characters, and by making the story primarily the story of one perThis leads incidentally to unity of tone, the jarring of incongruities in dialogue, and even in scene, being obviated by the clear realization of one dominant personality. But unity has also to be secured for the plot. Remembering that plot and character, the two elements of narration, are involved the one in the other; remembering also that unity is primarily a consideration of character, emphasis and coherence primarily considerations of plot, the narrator must nevertheless take care to unify the plot. Toward this his first step is the reduction of both the time and the place of the action to manageable limits. He has to select a place natural for the meeting of his characters, and cut out a piece of time within which, by the artistic simplification of life, he can make the action run its artificially rapid course to a culmination. So much of what precedes the significant period of his selection (§ 171) as is necessary for the understanding of the action within that period he will contrive, by dialogue or otherwise, during the earlier part of the action, to hint. If he begin with the hero's parents for the sake of exhibiting heredity, he will burden his tale with some twenty-five useless years, when the result might be achieved by somebody's remark during the course of the action proper. Instead of transporting the reader from New York to San Francisco and back for the sake of contributory incidents there, he may much more effectively have those incidents reported by one of the characters on the spot chosen for the scene of the main incidents. Skill in omission, which is a large part of the art of narrative, begins by a strict cutting down of time and place.

164. The reason for this is ultimately that art is an arbitrary simplification of life (§ 147). Verisimilitude, the illusion of actuality, which is an aim of art, is gained not by inclusion, but by exclusion. To assist in spirit at the unfolding of even a great love, or a daring crime, or a shrewd policy, within the limits of four walls and one week, or even one day, usually tasks the imagination less than to move in spirit, for the same period of reading, from place to place and from year to year. Simplification of machinery (§ 150), which begins in this way, contributes directly to verisimilitude. Therefore for the short story the simplification may be carried even to the extent of the "dramatic unities" of action, place, and time. The great Attic tragedies are limited, not only to the unfolding of one main action, but also to one place, typically the palace-front, and to one day. The same limits are kept, not only by the French classical drama, but also by many of the best modern French farces. The value of this concentration is intensity; the danger of it is that the illusion should fail through too obvious artificiality. For the short story, and especially for students, its promise outweighs its danger; and in general the value of unity in plot, whether it be carried so far or not, may be summed up in two words: simplification intensifies.

165. Narrative unity may be furthered by the skilful choice of a narrator. Scott's Kenilworth might have been bound together by telling it all from the point of view of Tressilian. David Copperfield approaches unity solely through its form of autobiography; and the same device is employed much better in Stevenson's Kidnapped and David Balfour and in many of Kipling's short stories. It appears also, though veiled by the

third person, in Henry Esmond. Decide, then, first whether your story will be unified most easily by an impersonal narrator, as by a spectator whose character is not suggested, or by a personal narrator; and, if the latter, by one of the actors or by some person outside, a sailor talking in a tavern, an Adirondack guide "swapping yarns," a cynical man of the world, an enthusiastic priest. But the care in this must not appear in elaborate preparation, as in a long or formal introduction. Like every other part of the mechanism, this must seem simple, lest it mar both illusion and proportions. Care in the choice of a narrator, with care that this mechanism shall not appear as mechanism, insures at least unity of tone; it may contribute much more.

b. Emphasis

It

166. Unity in plot, then, means the simplification of time and place, and a skilful choice of the narrator. is also involved, together with the principle of emphasis, in the fundamental idea of narration, that every story, and every part of a story, must proceed to one main event. This event, which determines the whole course of the story, without which, indeed, there is no story, is for both character and action the culmination, the issue, the solution. The fixing of the situation in which the story is to culminate, which is to be its outcome, serves the same purpose as the fixing of a conclusion in exposition or argument. It is the counsel of unity because it binds the whole into one; it is the counsel of emphasis because it involves the principle of climax. Climax, therefore, is the name commonly used of the story's close; and whether or not the story increase in force by

every stage, according to the literal meaning, the word still expresses conveniently the idea of progress to a culmination.

167. Another common term for the culmination of a story is the situation. The word situation suggests the necessity that the story culminate, not in a summary, but in an action. If the whole mood of narrative is concrete, not abstract, much more must the culmination be concrete. A story must close, not by logical solution of the action, by a "moral" summing up the whole, but by artistic solution of the action, that is by suggestion through word and deed. This situation is what the narrator imagines first. Until he can see this, he remains uncertain whether he has a story or not; when he sees this he may be fairly sure that the rest will come.

A frontiersman, coming home through the snow on lonely plains, finds his child crying at the breast of her dead mother. The horror of loneliness and privation is gathered into that scene. When the narrator has conceived that vividly - the sound of wailing in the silence as he approaches the door barred with snow, the action of the man at this crisis, giving the final revelation of his character - he has his story. For another narrator the climax of an action of the same import might be the insanity of the wife; and in either case, according to the narrator's conception, the climax, and therefore the whole story, might be either the man's or the woman's (§ 158). But for every narrator the goal is necessarily a situation.

C. Coherence

168. The same word situation is used also of the previous scenes leading successively to the great scene; for example, the scene on the plains would be just as much a situation if it were not the situation, the climax. Real